Euroarts’ three-DVD set contains a biographical documentary as
well as concert footage of Solti conducting the Chicago and the Bavarian
Radio Symphony orchestras. The documentary is a film by Peter Maniura made
for BBC’s Omnibus, and it, as well as both of the concerts, has
previously been released. They are here unified at budget price and were
released in this slip-cased edition to mark the 2012 centenary of
Solti’s birth.

I remember watching the film on Omnibus at the time of its original
transmission, indeed recording it on VHS. How many people have plastic
storage boxes groaning with archive VHS that they can no longer play and
have yet to find a way to transfer to a newer medium? Fortunately, this DVD
obviates that problem. Incidentally this biography is not to be confused
with that made by Georg Wübbolt released on C-Major 711708, which
contained Chicago footage from 1977 of music by Prokofiev (Classical
Symphony), Shostakovich (Symphony No.1) and Mussorgsky’s
Khovanshchina Prelude. The Omnibus documentary is the superior of the
two, and has rather more by way of depth and immediacy. It takes Solti back
to the village of his birth near Lake Balaton, and to his boyhood apartment
in Budapest. We are taken to the Liszt Academy where he learned ‘form
and phrasing’ and we hear about the irascible but brilliant teaching
of Leo Weiner. This, his encounters with Bartók and Kodály and
indeed the rest of the material is interspersed with rehearsal footage and
talks direct to camera. The famous anointing by Toscanini at Bayreuth in
1937 is naturally mentioned - ‘bene’ said the Italian - as is
the fact that he was the first Jew to conduct at the Hungarian State Opera,
though his performance on the night of the Anschlüss in Austria was
hardly propitious. ‘Don’t come back’ presciently cabled
Solti’s mother after he left Hungary. His period in Munich is noted as
is the moving film of his acquaintance with Strauss and the composer’s
subsequent funeral, for which Solti conducted. The Ring recording
rehearsal footage is quite well-known but still indispensable in the context
of Solti’s musical life. There is a certain, perhaps necessary amount
of biographical telescoping thereafter. Covent Garden, Frankfurt and Chicago
are speedily, though not cursorily discussed. There are a number of familiar
talking heads, Edward Downes, Andrew Porter, Christopher Raeburn among them,
and naturally we hear from Lady Solti. Much of Solti’s dynamism and
animal charisma comes across.

The second DVD contains Beethoven’s First Symphony, from the
Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Solti is given a rapturous
reception by the Prommers in this September 1978 performance and the Chicago
Symphony plays with huge conviction. The documentary makes clear that the
Solti years saw the Chicago orchestra touring regularly in a way that
contrasted significantly with the Reiner years, when they largely stayed
put. That said, I wouldn’t necessarily argue that the touring made
them any more of a ‘world-famous orchestra’ than under Reiner -
more visible to more people worldwide, certainly. The Schubert Sixth and
Eighth Symphonies were taped in Orchestra Hall, Chicago in December 1979.
I’m not aware that he recorded the Sixth in the studio. A six-minute
bonus introduction to the symphonies is included in which Solti talks about
his perception of the music. All three symphonic performances were directed
by Humphrey Burton.

He is rather more score-bound in the March 1990 performance of
Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony given with the Bavarian Radio Symphony,
though not at the expense of visceral engagement. The most pugilistic
examples of his art come at moments of heightened intensity in the third
movement of the Pathétique Symphony. To the end, he remained
indomitable, and rhythmically alive, like his hero Toscanini. These and many
other qualities are documented in the 93-minute biography and in the nearly
three hours of concert film and talk.